Worst Polluted Sites in Russia, China, India - Study
Date: 13-Sep-07
Country: US
Author: Timothy Gardner
Encompassing seven countries, the top 10 sites may cause
some 12 million people to suffer health problems ranging from
asthma and other respiratory ailments to birth defects and
premature death, the New York-based Blacksmith Institute said.
"These places are sapping the strength of the populations
around them, and it's not rocket science to fix them," Richard
Fuller, the nonprofit group's founder and director told
reporters on a conference call.
He said simple engineering projects could make many of the
places safe, but that funds, political will, and technical
ability were often lacking.
Concern about polluted places is growing as the world's
population swells and people in developing countries like China
and India buy more cars and electronics -- habits that had been
limited mainly to rich countries like the United States.
The polluted sites in Russia and the former Soviet
republics include Dzerzhinsk, Russia, which until the end of
the Cold War was one of the country's major chemical weapons
centers, and Chernobyl, Ukraine, where the world's worst
nuclear accident occurred in 1986, Blacksmith said its second
annual report.
China and India each has two sites in the top 10. Linfen,
China, is in Shanxi Province, the heart of country's expanding
coal industry, while Tianjin is one of the country's largest
lead production bases. In Tianjin, residents, particularly
children, suffer lead poisoning symptoms such as learning
disabilities, brain damage and kidney malfunction.
REMOTE LOCATIONS
In La Oroya, Peru, another top 10 site, heavy metal mining
has left 99 percent of children with higher than acceptable
levels of lead in their blood, the report said.
In Kabwe, Zambia, children who play in the soil near heavy
metal mining operations and young men who scavenge the metal,
have lead poisoning levels close to those regarded as
potentially fatal, Blacksmith said.
The institute, which worked on the report with Green Cross
Switzerland, did not rank the top sites because the quality of
health information from each country varies.
The polluted sites are often in remote mountain areas,
especially those linked to mining, which can complicate the
gathering of health data, the report said.
Blacksmith has amassed data over the last seven years on
400 sites to come up with the list that can be seen at
www.worstpolluted.com. This year, the institute also listed the
"Dirty 30," which includes the top 10 sites. In the expanded
list, Russia and former Soviet republics have 10 sites, and
China six.
No US sites were in the group's top 10 because pollution
laws there have led to the cleanup of heavily polluted areas
since the 1970s.
Consumers in rich countries could be indirectly responsible
for some of the pollution, however. "Much of the nickel in US
cars and lead in car batteries may have come from these
places," Fuller said.
The annual list was compiled with help from specialists at
Harvard University, Johns Hopkins University, Hunter College in
New York, India's ITT, the University of Idaho, Mt. Sinai
Hospital in New York and others.